CARTOON CONSERVATIVES

by Wayne Besen

Earlier today, a spokestoon for SpongeBob SquarePants announced he is breaking up with gay puppet icon Tinky Winky. Irreconcilable differences were cited, such as they were physically incompatible as neither one had private parts. The spokestoon also charged that Tinky had been chronically depressed after not getting cast for a part in the Broadway musical Avenue Q.

Hey, if Focus on the Family leader James Dobson can create a surreal gay plot with SpongeBob SquarePants, why can’t I? If you haven’t heard, Dobson accused the animated yellow sponge, who lives in a "pineapple under the sea", of starring in a "pro-homosexual video".

"Does anybody here know SpongeBob?" Dobson ominously asked on stage at a pre-inaugural dinner for members of Congress. If you listen closely to the C-SPAN rerun, I think you can hear alleged closet case David Drier, R-Calif., stand up and exclaim, "Oh, I do. I know Spongy Poo." But the character’s sexual orientation was news to everyone else in the room.

The video in question, "We Are Family" (OK - maybe it does sound a little gay) calls for tolerance of all people and will be shown in schools. You think a professed Christian like Dobson would embrace such a loving message. But no, he considers anything short of throwing gay people on the rack "pro-homosexual".

I have to admit, I sometimes envy right-wingers. They can be as creative with reality as they wish, and their bamboozled base of boobs rewards their audacity with membership and money.

Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and a liberal leader like Howard Dean claimed at an Inaugural dinner that Porky Pig was a secret right wing Republican with ties to Halliburton.

First, the audience would be silent, waiting for the punch line. Then there would be an outbreak of random, nervous snickers. Finally, the place would erupt in uproarious laughter as security searched for a butterfly net to take him away.

But in right wing circles these days, everyone seems to be singing from the same song sheet: Loony Tunes.

The reason Dobson & Friends hit these nutty notes is because their feckless flocks are gullible. For example, during the presidential campaign the Republican National Committee sent a flyer to conservatives in West Virginia and Arkansas that showed a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED." The flyer tells these hapless dupes to "vote Republican to protect our families" and stop the "liberal agenda."

Could anybody really be that dense to think that Barney Frank and Hillary Clinton were going to drive a division of armored Volvos into West Virginia and repossess heavily thumped Bibles? Oh yeah, Bush won the state with the help of "values voters".

If there is one lesson I’ve learned in politics, it is that once people believe the Lord is on their side, there is no such thing as stooping too low to please Him. With a clear conscience, conservatives will trot out lying hacks like commentator-on-the-take Armstrong Williams and discredited quacks like Richard Cohen to promote their agenda.

Cohen is the president of PFOX, a Virginia "ex-gay" group that specializes in helping parents reject their gay children. The author of "Coming Out Straight" and Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s ex-gay advisor, Cohen is one of the leading "experts" right wing political groups use to say that gay people can become heterosexual through prayer and therapy.

Earlier this week, I dropped the bombshell that Cohen had been permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association for unethical behavior. Before this revelation, I had reported in my book, "Anything But Straight" that Cohen had once belonged to a bizarre cult on an island near Seattle that got in hot water for practicing nude therapy.

Despite Cohen’s peculiar past and disgraced career, right wing groups had no qualms about making him an anti-gay spokesperson. The moral of the story is the right has no morals. Any lackey who tows the party line can be a high-priced "expert" with no checks or balances to make sure he or she is legit. But what is the incentive to have respected experts when the unbalanced bring in the checks?

If SpongeBob would only become an ex-gay, he could replace Cohen as a right wing spokesperson. After all, they’ll take anyone, no matter how cartoonish.

http://www.waynebesen.com/columns/2005_01_01_archive.html